Li’s words about the Japanese threat turned out to be prophetic. In 1894, Japan went to war with China over control of Korea in the First Sino-Japanese War. By the late 1880s, the Empress Dowager had returned to her goal of rebuilding the Summer Palace, and had diverted important government revenues into the project. The… Read more »
Soon a larger worry than the Western powers emerged for China: its neighbor to the east, Japan. The contrast was especially vivid between two leaders in the process of modernizing their countries, Li Hongzhang and Itō Hirobumi. These contrasts “revealed a widening gulf between the two powers–one rising steadily and rapidly, the other struggling to… Read more »
Cixi stepped down from the regency in favor of her teenage son, the Tongzhi Emperor, in 1873. Cixi retired to other projects, devoting herself to building a sumptuous new Summer Palace to replace the one destroyed by the British. But when her son died suddenly in 1875, Cixi quickly maneuvered to put herself back in… Read more »